Inaugural Over 55s State Tournament

The inaugural NSW State Over 55’s tournament was a huge success. It was held at the fantastically appointed Central Coast Regional Sports Complex in Tuggerah, where four games can take place concurrently and the teams all share facilities, which aids in socialising at the cricket and adding to the tournament atmosphere. The spread-out nature of the various Central Coast villages offering accommodation, still proves to pull us apart socially at night, say as compared to Armidale, Orange or Port Macquarie. But the cricketing facilities are first rate at Tuggerah, (if a little bowler friendly), and the location is close enough to Sydney to SOS for reserves or for Port Jackson players to commute if required on game day.

The State 55’s was arranged at fairly short notice after having been postponed several times due to Covid-19 and the sodden weather. The tournament being a first attempt was designed to be small with eight (8) sides tussling for the trophies. Port Jackson were asked to supply two sides and our 27 nominations covered that number comfortably. Most of the other regions combined sides to bolster their numbers bar Central Coast who were hosting at home. Tamworth combined with New England, Riverina with Western and Newcastle with Hunter.

The PJ Committee selected two sides – a 1st XI and 2nd XI, only vaguely ranked as we weren’t sure how the seedings were going to work. Port Jackson regular Michael Hall skippered our 1st XI (“PJ Red”) with his usual aplomb and Pete Smith wrangled the PJ Blue 2’s. Players were selected from 14 different Sydney basin clubs.

Results in the State 55’s

PJ Red lost controversially on the first day but it’s fair to say our outstanding sportsmanship saved a nuclear incident! The PJ Red side bounced back strongly to win their matches on days 2 and 3 and just missed being in the Division 1 Final via the quirk of a couple of hundredths of a point in quotient and ultimately came 3rd overall in the tournament and were crowned winners of the Division 2 comp. I know we’re fired up to do better at the next 55’s tournament. Leading run getters were Adrian “Cottonsocks” Schwager, Alan “Jason Bourne” Willmore, John “Benjamin Button” Adamson, Mick “Terminator” Hall and Rick “Dr Who” Howard. The wickets were shared around between Willmore, Adamson, Dave “Easy Rider” Craig and Lindsay “LeBon” Le Bas.

PJ Blue came 5th overall with one emphatic win and two very narrow losses, where we were in both games until the last. Blues were crowned Div 3 winners. A very narrow loss on day one against a Tamworth-New England side brimming with State reps. We batted first and got mid 180’s, which wasn’t bad on a huge oval. Out in the field, we had Tamworth-New England well on the back foot at 6 for 102 with only 9 overs remaining. Unfortunately, some big hitting and some tired Port Jacko fielders in the massive spaces out there couldn’t protect the target and Tamworth-NE got up with 4 balls to spare. One that got away. We had an even bigger sob-story to drown our sorrows with on Day 2 on the same massive oval out the back of the complex.

We again batted first and scored a commanding 215. Once bowling, we took steady wickets and were well in control, with Newcastle-Hunter 8/110 and 9/128. Somehow, they rallied for a great last wicket partnership of over 90! Their #11 scored his first ever 50 whilst their one retired batter came back in and flogged us all over the field, with the ball landing in every blank space possible and us not helping ourselves dropping 2 catches. So, we lost in disappointing circumstances. On day 3 in the 5th v 6th playoff, we again scored a handy first innings total for 245 and this time bowled and fielded well to bowl a tired Mid North Coast – (led by the legend himself Baz “Blackie” Everingham), out for 106.

Leading bowlers for the tournament were spinners Peter “Radar” O’Reilly and leggie Paul “Auteur de L'attentat” Frost, while the leading run-getters were Radar, Ed “The Executioner” Cross, Nick Garling and Pete “King Kong Bundy” Smith, with other contributions from Jeremy “Fabio” Berenger and Marty “The Novelist” Speiser.

In summary, the inaugural State 55’s was an excellent tournament and will get even better. For Port Jackson Vets, we noticed that our tail of 60+ aged guys, couldn’t compete as well at 55s level, especially in the field. There was nothing in the matches really and we could quite easily have played a PJ Red v PJ Blue final in Div 1.